He who dies lives forever
by TenshiNoAkuma
Summary: Devil Survivor/TWEWY.  Joshua doesn't remember any of his past lives, and for that reason, he is envious of one who does.


Once he takes the Composer's Seat, Joshua sees Naoya, his three time acquaintance, in a wholly different light. When they meet again, Joshua sees Naoya's soul and mentally takes it apart, parsing its history with a mere thought while he greets Naoya. But when Joshua does so, a smirk makes its way across Naoya's face before he says, "Congratulations on the promotion." 

* * *

Joshua meets with Naoya during the miraculously rare moments when Joshua happens to have free time from his Composer duties and Naoya happens to be in Shibuya. Cain, that is what this soul is called, and the body it currently resides in, Naoya. Gin - not Eiji Kamiya - was just one of Cain's previous bodies. The nature of Cain - a soul that retains a name, when most others do not - fascinates Joshua almost as much as Neku's soul had when he first saw it. Ah, but perhaps that isn't quite true; Cain is almost laughably ordinary, but there is one thing that sets Naoya apart from the bodies other souls take. One vital difference.

Memory. Naoya remembers the previous lives of his soul. As did every other body Cain had inhabited. Even Joshua doesn't have that, doesn't have a name for his soul, and the small part of him that is like an instinctive child wants what Naoya has.

But Joshua's learnt from that Game, and restrains himself, reining in his desires lest he stops seeing the bigger picture and breaks precious things around him in his quest to fulfil them. Instead, he sits beside Naoya on a bench. There's always a gap between them; anything less suggests a kind of comraderie or friendship that doesn't exist. "They say life, like a cherry blossom is beautiful," Joshua begins, leaning back against the bench to cast his gaze across the teeming masses of people. "But life, like a cherry blossom, is also short."

Naoya's response doesn't surprise him, not after his opening words after Joshua came to be Shibuya's Composer. "Come now, you're better than that. You and I... we both know life never ends."

No, no it doesn't, and the fact Naoya _knows_ makes him more difficult to threaten.

* * *

Many truncated conversations later, Joshua finds Naoya with what looks like a Nintendo DS on the table while Naoya is typing away on his laptop. Throwing himself into the chair near him, Joshua greets, "I didn't think you were the type to play those sorts of games."

Naoya barely looks up from his rapid fire typing, and Joshua doesn't make any effort to hide his attempts to look over his shoulder at the screen. He's a little disappointed it isn't anything he can easily mock Naoya for - browsing 2chan or looking at peoples' online personal profiles. Naoya's typing is all gibberish to him, and most of it in a completely different language, but Joshua can spot the words 'Demon Summoning Program' on the screen. But the moment he sees those words, Naoya abruptly slams shut the laptop and turns to face him. "Your Game is a bigger version of the games people play on their computers. Mine will be bigger than both."

Naoya's gaze flickers back to his laptop, and its meaning isn't lost on Joshua. "And how will you command them, Naoya? Last I heard, demons are not quite your organised swim team."

"I have my ways," Naoya says, but his mind tells Joshua that it will be through the COMPs - that DS lookalike - the Shomonkai and Naoya's... no, _Cain's_, brother. Joshua doesn't need to scan Naoya's mind to know he intends to break the boundaries that keeps the demonic plane separate from the RG and UG. "With me, you can taste _real_ power."

Joshua can't help but laugh at that. "And here I thought you knew who I am."

"A human with a God complex is still a human. I'm giving you the... _opportunity_, to throw off the chains of His Law."

Joshua frowns at those words. Neither of them are particularly close to God, but the difference in their distance was never so poignant until now. One works against Him while the other works for Him, and Joshua knows that despite enjoying Naoya's company, he will not side with Cain. He knows what it will entail - the demons of the lower planes, those who have degraded so far in the reincarnation cycle they were not brought to this world - and that's not the type of power he wants. "Bring trouble to my district, and I _will_ erase you," but Joshua knows it is an empty threat.

Naoya knows it too, and gives Joshua a single bark of laughter before he gives Joshua an almost unnaturally wide smirk. He stands and takes his laptop and COMP before he says casually over his shoulder, "As long as you continue to bow to Him and play by His rules, you're still powerless."

* * *

Right now, all Joshua wants to do is scream obscenities. He _should_ have removed either one of the soul siblings from the picture, and what gets his goat the most is that he _could_ have. But he hadn't, and now, during the Lockdown, Joshua has his hands full attempting to quell the dissonance within Shibuya's music. Briefly, he looks to the people and all he sees and hears when he scans them is panic, panic, panic, and people giving into their fears and people giving into their primal instincts and Joshua wants to make. them. stop. The way _his_ people are behaving disgusts Joshua. It's a kind of degradation into kill or be killed, and that kind of mindset doesn't suit his Shibuya.

For the briefest of moments, Joshua feels like he had not so long ago, all anger and frustration, ready to explode and destroy what he loves in a moment of petty rage. But, he supposes, in this situation, that would be what the Angels would want, and he admits, that is yet another reason not to turn his back on Shibuya. Deep down, he's always been a believer in the great things humanity could be capable of when allowed free will, and the last thing he wants is the Angels to take that away. Instrumentality is a rather boring thing, he thinks, and not for this world. So when he catches sense of Abel and friends in Shibuya and plucks their thoughts from their minds and feels the fragments of Bel gathering, Joshua can't help but feel a small flutter of hope somewhere and grins.

Things won't go the way Naoya wants them to, and Joshua takes some grim satisfaction in that.

He receives a phone call from Neku, which he takes and is immediately aurally assaulted by questions and demands. Making a irritated noise at the back of the throat, Joshua answers, "This situation is hardly my doing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more important matters to attend to," and cuts off Neku's indignant response with the press of a button. Pocketing his cell, Joshua tugs at the staves of music and - he hates being so rough with Shibuya - reins them in before they become lost forever.

* * *

When Joshua comes into possession of Naoya's soul, he considers destroying it in a bout of petty revenge for all the trouble Naoya has caused him in 7 days. But knowing he will suffer His absolute wrath in doing so, Joshua lets Cain return to the cycle, mulls over Naoya's last words to him and considers climbing up the power ladder once more.


End file.
